Search Engine Sabotage: How HIBU (an SEO Company) Tanked Our Rankings

At the beginning of 2025, we had a lot of big plans for Aard Pest Control. We were implementing a new software system to handle all our scheduling, billing, customer portal and communications. We were working on getting bids for redoing and consolidating our company's insurance as well as vehicle and property insurance. And several smaller projects that were well overdue.

For the last 5 years, I have personally have been handling our website, and everything search engine related. I feel like I did a pretty good job, but this wasn’t really my expertise and there are so many companies out there that claim to excel in this area. So, I interviewed a couple SEO companies and hired HIBU. I admit that the sales guy was a big reason. We just clicked, and he felt like a guy I could trust. So around the end of January, I signed a 6-month contract with HIBU to improve my google rankings while I worked on other priorities.

The first few days, I had a lot of contact with HIBU while I answered their questions about Aard, gave them access to our website, access to our Google accounts and social media accounts. Then there was nothing… no communication at all! They did send me an automated monthly email, but that was it.

On April 1, 2025, I realized I hadn’t heard anything from them and they had promised "constant contact" and "regular updates." So I sent my HIBU account manager the following email.

“It feels like, since I paid you guys, Aard has been abandoned? How are we doing? The dashboard says fancy words like clicks, impressions, ranking, etc... but doesn’t give any context to last week or last month which kind of makes it worthless to me.”

I got no response to that email or to my voice mails. So on April 11th, I sent my HIBU guy this email.

“WTH, Are you on a long vacation or am I just wasting money with HIBU?”

On Monday April 14, 2025, I finally got a call back from HIBU saying they were sorry, but your account manager is no longer with the company. Well these things happen I told myself. In the meantime. There was small problem. My company’s name was displaying in Google as “AaRD Pest Control.” This seems like a stupid mistake for an expert, but they did fix it quickly and they promised to go over what they had been doing and keep in touch this time. Again, there was nothing… no contact at all. (They claimed they had tried to contact me at my office and I can’t prove they didn’t, but my cell phone, text messages and email show nothing)

On June 2, 2025, my office pointed out another mistake on our Google Business Profile. I contacted HIBU and I found out that they had assigned me to another account manager and they didn't know why I hadn't heard from him. At this point, I knew I wasn't getting my money’s worth

I did a few searches about SEO and was soon being hit by lots of SEO adds on my social media account. I filled out 1 form online and every SEO company in america started calling me. I spoke with a few of them and they ALL showed me charts, like the one below, and asked me what happened around the end of January?


This led to me contacting HIBU multiple times and asking them questions like "what have you been doing?", "why I’m paying?" and "can you show me any progress?" They were very polite, but no, they could not show me anything. Nor could they tell me anything they had done for me. I told them I they were "fired" to which they let me know that I was still under contract until August.

At this point, I guess they decided to start doing some actual work and that’s when everything got really bad.

They added a blog to my website with one blog post that contained an 18 MB image making the page extremely slow, They messed up the all the navigation to the website trying to add that blog. Then they started making changes to my Google business listing.

On July 10 and 11, 2025 I spent 2 very late nights, just before my vacation, fixing the website and during this time I decided to keep the blog that I’m now posting this on.

During my vacation, I spoke with HIBU’s customer dissatisfaction team about cancelling early and getting a refund. But they basically told me that I did not qualify for a refund and I needed to pay them for the entire contract.

On Monday, July 21, 2025, I returned from vacation and found that Google was displaying that my company was “Permanently Closed”

They had somehow managed to remove my company from google altogether. We lost our 4.8-star rating. We lost hundreds of great customer reviews and we’re no longer ranking on google at all.

I left several voice mails with HIBU that day and did not receive a call back! I decided to create a new Google business profile so at least google wouldn’t show “Permanently Closed”

Time to contact a Lawyer.

I’ve used a great lawyer in the past for legal advice and to assist me in writing contracts but didn’t know if he was the right type of lawyer for this. Turns out, he was already working with some other clients on similar issues against this exact same company!

July 22, 2025, I sent another email to HIBU using every contact email for them I could find and Cc’d my lawyer. HIBU support emailed me back right away with a laundry list of documents I needed to give them, so that they could request that my Google business account be restored. I managed to find everything I needed and reply back within an hour.

July 23, 2025 HIBU support tells me that Google had suspended my business listing without explanation and my chances of getting it back were very low. I hadn't touched the listing in over 2 years. HIBU was the only other person with access so if I was suspended it must be because of something they did.

later that day, HIBU customer dissatisfaction team called and offered me a tiny refund. I laughed and told her it was much less than what they were charging me every month. I then told her she needs to read through my latest emails with HIBU support and note that my lawyer is Cc’d on those.

July 24,2025 no call, but they sent me an email saying they were going to refund me 1 month worth of charges.

July 30,2025 They added a post to my facebook page!?! I've now sent them quite a few emails telling them to STOP EVERYTHING! How hard is it to understand stop! I alread removed their access to my website and my Google business listing. I guess I have to Block them on Facebook too.

August 5,2025 They sent me an automated email claiming they did 3 things this week:
1. Updates to your website. I removed their access 2 weeks ago.
2. An FAQ page. Blatent lie. My FAQ page hasn't changed in several months and I checked the timestamp on the file.
3. Blog Posts. Partial lie. They made 1 blog post before I removed their access to my site
I spent another 20 minutes on hold trying to call them at 844-213-3230 before I gave up
I sent them another email today saying STOP! CANCEL!

August 11,2025 They are still sending automated reports
I spent another 20 minutes on hold trying to call them at 844-213-3230 before I gave up
I sent them multiple emails today to STOP!! and started Cc'ing my lawyer again.

In summary:
Before HIBU, Google stats say that I was getting about 5 calls a week and 3 to 5 thousand website visits every month.
After HIBU, Google stats say I’ve had zero phone calls for the last 5 months and my traffic is in the low 200's
They make it nearly impossible to cancel service


HIBU has destroyed my Google search reputation. I feel like I tipped the waiter to poop on my table.